You’re not alone in thinking 2023 has gone by in a flash – as the year draws to a close, we wanted to look back on some of the most prominent events within the digital space.

The Emergence of AI

Now AI wasn’t born this year, but it certainly announced itself to the world in 2023.

Artificial intelligence comes in many forms and has been met with some concern as to what it could mean for a host of professionals. The power it harnesses can pose a threat to many in the creative industry and has even caused some of the biggest names and organisations in Hollywood to go on strike.

The most commonly known form of AI is the text-based generator, ChatGPT – we wrote an article on it at the start of the year, so why not take a read?

Twitter’s Controversial Rebrand to X

We could be here until the end of 2024 discussing Twitter’s chaotic year – but here’s a quick summary.

At the start of the year, Twitter Blue became a reality, it was a paid subscription that allowed users to access certain premium features. A report in February stated only 290,000 accounts paid for the premium version, out of a total of 450 million monthly active users.

Fast forward a couple of months and we bid a fond farewell to the Twitter branding as we knew it and in came X – the beginning of Elon Musk’s grand vision for the company.

It’s taken a while for people to get on board, but people are slowly getting used to the brand change – but the controversy still lingers. Who knows what 2024 will hold for the platform, but the ads creative solutions team will certainly be on top of it.

Introducing Threads

Capitalising on X’s downturn, the “Godfather” of social media, Mark Zuckerberg, released Meta’s latest social offering in Threads.

It was touted as the “Twitter Killer”, with the similarities between the two platforms glaringly obvious – off-the-cuff, short-form text content, we’ve seen that before!

Threads got off to a great start, with over 100 million sign-ups within the first week – but once the hype had died down, people quickly lost interest.

Whilst we certainly haven’t heard the last about Threads, for now, it remains a project Meta is going to try and crack.

Barbie Takes Over

It’s not every day a film is so highly anticipated that brands worldwide jump on the back of the hype – but that’s exactly what we saw with the Barbie film on its summer release.

Pink this, pink that – so many brands sought out unique ways to capitalise on the film of the year. From London Underground stations being renamed to a real-life Barbie house on Airbnb, we really did see the best in creative marketing.

There was so much Barbie mania, we couldn’t help but soak it in!

The Talk of Augmented Reality Still Rumbles On

Augmented Reality (AR), is something that has been bubbling away in the digital world for some years now and we’ve become more than familiar with it in its most basic form.

With the likes of IKEA and John Lewis using it in their mobile apps to allow the user to see what specific pieces of furniture would look like in situ, or social platforms like Snapchat and TikTok using different filters – AR isn’t anything new.

However, the evolution of it will be a far cry from what we see today.

Big names are now starting to develop their offering – arguably the most anticipated piece of tech for 2024 will be Apple’s VisionPro headset.

Should their vision for technology come to fruition, the way we interact with our technology could change forever.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing we’re certain of in 2024, it would be that the digital world won’t be slowing down, if anything, it’ll only speed up. As always, the ads creative solutions team will be at the forefront of any changes in the industry!